Top level categories in my notes
What kind of top-level categories do you have for your notes?
If you’re doing knowledge management you might use or adapt Tiago Forte’s PARA system:
- Projects
- Activities
- Resources
- Archive
Or you might consider using Bob Doto’s four-folder approach:
- In-box
- Sleeping
- References
- Main
Tame the chaos with just four folders for all your notes.
Prolific German sociologist Niklas Luhmann’s second collection of notes, his second Zettelkasten (ZKII) was arranged according to eleven top-level categories, based on subjects or themes associated with his singular major project, a theory of society.
- Organisation theory
- Functionalism
- Decision theory
- Amt: office, post, job, duty
- Formal / informal order
- Sovereignty / State
- Isolated/individual terms, problems
- Economy
- Ad hoc notes
- Archaic societies
- High cultures
In his lecture on Luhmann’s Zettelkasten, researcher Johannes Schmidt of the Niklas Luhmann Archive at Bielefeld University observes that these headings are hardly comprehensive. Instead they strongly echo the progression of Luhmann’s scholarly interests over many years.
“Looking at these you quickly see that this does not describe a certain body of knowledge to work through like in the first Zettelkasten. If you know a bit about the development of Luhmann’s theory you quickly recognize this as a historic record of research interests.”
Simon Willison says:
💬 “I’m effectively using Substack as a lightweight way to allow people to subscribe to my blog via email.”
I already do this easily via micro.blog and it’s a lot less convoluted. I guess he has complete control of the output though, provided he’s happy to tinker like this.
Finished reading Trip to the Moon by John Yorke
Trip to the Moon by John Yorke 📚 sets out the author’s deeply-considered views on the nature of story and goes further than his previous work on the same theme, Into the Woods.
John Yorke is a highly experienced writer and producer for British TV, and here he presents invaluable insights into how stories really work, from the perspective of someone who absolutely knows what he’s talking about. I found the section on non-western story-forms very interesting, and though I wasn’t convinced by the claim that stories in all cultures are basically fueled by ‘some bastardization of the hero’s journey’, just hearing the argument made by a true expert was very helpful.
More convincing - and worrying - was the claim that effective storytellers ‘unshackle us from empirical observation by drugging us with rage or anger or pleasure.’ Indeed, if this book has a single key theme, it might be that telling stories is a uniquely dangerous skill, whose seductive power we’d do well to understand much better than we do.
The insights of Trip to the Moon are profound, though a more rigorous edit would have served the work well. In places the text feels unbalanced. Crucial developments are often truncated in the main chapters only to resurface in the lengthy commentary at the back. Despite this imbalance, the author’s body of work remains vital for any aspiring writer. Start with Into the Woods before tackling this more fragmented sequel.
💬 The fight against the far-right is much more compelling to voters when it is framed in the practical opposition to corruption than the ideological opposition to populism. — Ian Dunt, Substack.
A lesson from Hungary for the rest of us.
Make YouTube videos and you’ll eventually be tempted to sit in a bath of ketchup or jump into a tiny pool with a goat – but either would bring relief from the cat photos the rest of us seem compelled to post.
How do social media platforms trap users in networks they would rather leave? | UNSW
On Mastodon, Harold Jarche points to the renewed relevance of Harold Innis, the mid-20th century Canadian scholar who called out US media imperialism for what it was.
💬 “We can only survive by taking persistent action at strategic points against American imperialism in all its attractive guises.”
I’ve written about Innis’s lost notes but his warnings about the distorting power of the media are very appropriate now.
I’m reading about the traditional Japanese porch, the engawa, seen here at the Shugakuin Imperial Villa.
But right now I’m sitting on the typically Australian version, the verandah, an idea the colonialists took from India.
In each case, inside and outside connect quite elegantly.
Jorge Arango’s book, Duly Noted: Extend your mind through connected notes, has its own Flickr page, with a set of photos, images and screenshots — illustrations that inform the book’s text. I like this idea and am saving it here in case it’s useful in future — whether for me or for someone else.
Thoughts on ‘The Memex Method’
Today I noticed that the ridiculously prolific author and tech activist Cory Doctorow is commissioned to publish a book in 2027 on “The Memex Method”, which he described in a post of that name back in 2021. The basic idea is that he publishes continually in public by means of many, many blog posts, then collates it into books.
💬 “Traditionally, a writer identifies a subject of interest and researches it, then writes about it. In the (my) blogging method, the writer blogs about everything that seems interesting, until a subject gels out of all of those disparate, short pieces.”
I mentioned this post back in 2023, when I suggested: to build something big, start with small fragments.
Writing is still about thinking
According to author Larry McEnerney, writing is an essential part of a sophisticated thinking process. He says:
💬 “So here’s what you’re doing, you are thinking about your world in very difficult ways. This is a terrifically good thing, and it’s the source of most of the value of your work. Now, you are also writing about that world, and this is where it starts, the problem starts arising. Unlike a journalist, almost surely you are using your writing process to help yourself think. In other words, the thinking that you’re doing is at such a level of complexity that you have to use writing to help yourself do your thinking.” - Larry McEnerney: The Craft of Writing Effectively | Youtube
In my own reading I’ve felt there’s a difference between published writing as useful information (e.g. ‘how to fix that annoying computer problem’) and published writing as the voice of a human grappling with complexity (‘how I fixed my annoying computer problem ‘).
In the first instance I don’t care if the ‘author’ is AI, so long as the suggested fix actually works. I don’t need evidence of a thought process; I just want to fix my computer. In the second instance, the central thing I’m looking for is evidence of human thought. And if the writing starts to smell of AI, I don’t bother even finishing it.
But even though the AI-written information articles always seem highly plausible, I’ve found the ‘information’ contained to be highly untrustworthy. Sometimes it’s correct and helpful, other times it’s wildly off beam. That’s not exactly ideal. I noticed that at least one version of Microsoft Copilot says it’s ‘for entertainment only’ - which makes it a bit worrying that they named it Copilot.
So whether I do need a human or don’t need a human, either way, AI prose isn’t really doing it for me.
Well, here are some articles that consider the vexed question of whether AI text counts as writing, or just glorified Lorem Ipsum filler – or worse:
- Alex Woods | Don’t let AI write for you.
- N. Cailie | I am definitely missing the pre-AI writing era.
- Elizabeth Spiers | The Anti-Intellectualism of Silicon Valley Elites.
- “We can decide that we want to be human” | The Guardian.
- Less Wrong | Folie à Machine: LLMs and Epistemic Capture.
- Manuel Morale’s two-step process for writing AI-free blog posts (an amusing response to an interesting discussion).
I’m the author of Shu Ha Ri: The Japanese Way of Learning, for artists and Fighters, which I wrote myself and I also took all the photos myself. If you’re interested in learning, teaching, art, fighting, or Japanese aesthetics and philosophy, you might just find this short book of relevance to you.